In addition to physical resource planning, I want to mention about logical planning, design and migration.

As indicated in the post virtual migration might be smooth, actually If data centers close enough, migration might be almost seamless. Between the data centers interconnect link can be purchased for short amount of time and all the networking devices ( assume there is no single point of failure ) can be shifted to another data center.

Then both data center for s short amount of time will work on single point of failure but meanwhile application load can be started to migrate.

Depends on the Data center interconnect link capacity of course; application load can be carried from old data center to new one.

Out side work needs to be consider of course such as DNS , BGP announcements so on but with the help of Load balancer and proper routing design migration might be done smoothly.

There are many things need to be written to show how such as protocols,vendor specific implementation so on but this is already long comment I believe.

Hmm...this is the same project that resourced out to the staffing firms looking to pay low hourly rates as 'all inclusive' and the economics didn't work at that time as they needed to pay more for experience in that data center migration in Oregon. Penny wise and pound foolish. How much would they have saved if they spent more on the resources to do it right?

I see. I was thinking in terms of personal data privacy laws -- seems that data center location can be an issue for cloud service providers with customers in regions with more stringent personal data privacy laws.

Actually I hve seen data centres kept from moving for exactly that reason but it comes into play far more often when discussing support for the data centre particularlly in these days of lights out data centre and follow the sun operational support.

That's really interesting Clifford, thanks for the insight! I thought consolidation and growth requirements would be drivers, but I hadn't considered political/social factors. Along that line, have you seen privacy laws affecting data center moves?

And good point about the principals applying to the smaller components; it does seem like those would be more common scenarios.

Hi Marcia I have seen a few Data Centres for a few companies move over the years and can suggest a few reasons based on those experiences. One is consolidation of services. Between mergers, takeovers and the selling of divisions, corporations can end up with multiple small data centres or else sharing facilities with other companies and wish to consolidate components. Another is the political and social atmosphere in the region. In the 70's and early 80s a great many companies in Canada moved from Quebec to Ontario and New Brunswick due to concerns over the seperatist movement. but the two biggest reason are 1) the current facility may not meet your projected needs going forward. You may not have the space available to expand the floor or the cost of upgrading your infrastructure may be too high. And big reason 2)just plain property value. Your data centre may have been in a fairly remote location when it was built in the 80s but urban sprawl has since surronded it with with other businesses and caused the property values to sky rocket. So the appeal of turning the space over to other uses combined with incentives being offered by another region could make relocation logical. One key thing to remember though is while Irwin appears to talking about moving entire data centres, the principles apply exactly the same if you are talking about moving smaller components such as your web hosting services or file services as well and these are much more common.

Hello Marcia, yes ensuring proper change control is paramount to the success of the engagement. with all the moving parts and dependencies therein it is important that a strict change management is followed, AND most importantly captured in your migration project plan. In some cases you might have to accelerate the process in order to meet crucial deadlines as set forth by the business units....

Our latest survey shows growing demand, fixed budgets, and good reason why resellers and vendors must fight to remain relevant. One thing's for sure: The data center is poised for a wild ride, and no one wants to be left behind.